Pumpkin Patch & Apples

Today was a lovely fall day. The leaves are about at their peak, the sun was shining....it seemed like the perfect day to head to the mountains for some apple picking. Mom packed some lunch and everyone loaded into the car to head back to McIntosh Fruit Farm in Berryville, VA. Since we had such a good time picking peaches, we thought we would have an even better time picking apples.

Some of you are probably saying to yourself, "gee, isn't October 26 a little late to be picking apples?" This thought occurred to us; however, the brochure from the fruit farm clearly listed a couple of types of apples in October and November. When we got there, we found very few people and even fewer apples. It turned out that all the apples were picked, thus we resorted to "picking" apples out of the crates (hey, at least we could see the trees they came off of). The good news was that you could still pick pumpkins. We loaded Anna into the little red wagon and hiked across the farm to the pumpkin patch. It should be noted that it rained all day on Saturday so that by the time we reached the pumpkin patch we and our wagon were covered in mud. We marched (or stumbled) through the patch and picked out a pumpkin. Anna even picked out one her size. When we emerged from the pumpkin patch back at the gate, the owners seemed incredulous that we hiked all the way to the field to get a pumpkin when they had hundreds of them from the very same field sitting conveniently by the check-out. The things we do for Anna. We treated ourselves to some fresh pumpkin pie before attempting to scrape the mud off of our city-slicker shoes and returning to the suburbs with our hand-picked apples and hard-earned pumpkin, which we are certain we will appreciate much more than if we just bought one from the grocery store. It will make a fine jack-o-lantern.